Year of the Plague 2020: a far from average year. Self-isolation diary week 21

One of the things I’ve missed since the appearance of Covid 19 has been our weekly visit to Newton Dee for food shopping and visits to their café for a slice of some of the tastiest organic cakes and scones in the northeast. Newton Dee is an attractive community (part of the Camphill group) that supports adults with special needs where staff from across the world, permanent and temporary volunteer, live with residents and operate craft workshops for skills such as wooden toy making. There’s a farm at Newton Dee and an excellent bakery producing a variety of excellent bread. Their polenta cake is a particular favourite of mine. Given the vulnerability of its residents Newton Dee decided to shut off public access to its store, café and bakery which meant so much of the lovely produce we took for granted before March we now have to obtain online sans Newton Dee’s bakery products, eggs, fruit and veg. What’s missing is contact with the residents we’ve come to know over decades and wish them all well during this exceptionally difficult time.

It’s easy to understand the caution shown to their residents by Newton Dee perhaps best illustrated by Aberdeen’s return to lockdown following a number of the city’s bars failing to adhere to government regulations regarding social distancing. There are always selfish or thoughtless people with no consideration for anyone but themselves – folk desperate to get back into bars and footballers fall into one or other or both of those categories. As someone said to me, footballers aren’t famous for their intelligence. Now a whole city has to pay for the selfishness of pub-goers. With numbers of cases of Covid on the rise it is a difficult time for Aberdonians and those of us in the shire whose lives are inextricably linked with the city; through family, work, leisure etc, now greatly disrupted again. And all for a pint or several.

Bought some peanut biscuits through our regular online order from a large supermarket. They were horrible. All gloss and no taste so I found a recipe and made some. No flour only straight peanut butter. As I was using smooth I roasted peanuts, broke them up a bit and added them along with an egg and a tiny bit salt. That was it. They weren’t as crisp as they might have been. I could have popped them back into the oven but they were being eaten too quickly and they tasted much nicer than those glossy and tasteless horrors. In the interests of fairness I have tasted excellent peanut biscuits from a different supermarket but they don’t appear to sell them here anymore.

One of the highlights of the daily walk has been tasting some of the yellow rasps growing along the roadsides and farm tracks. They’re small and have a different flavour from their red cousins. We call them honey rasps.

Last Thursday we decided to ring the changes with a trip to the Suie. The Suie is high ground (416 metres/ 1365 ft) between Alford and Clatt with spectacular views. We walked a short way through the pine wood and out onto the heather muir where the Gordon Way starts (or finishes depending on the direction taken.) It was a very warm day and the stiff breeze wafted unusually warm air which intensified the smell of pine.

Through a break in the trees we glimpsed the distinctive shape of Tap o’ Noth (yes, Noth not North.) Tap o’ Noth is a flat-top mountain near Rhynie – an ancient vitrified hill fort dating back to Pictish times. Further on the view opens out to take in the rural landscape around Huntly. On the muir ling and bell heathers were blooming in great profusion as well as a bumper harvest of cranberries and blueberries; ripe and glossy under the sun. And through the wood lots of fungi, always a magical sight for their sheer variety and strangely magical connotations. Marked march (boundary) stones which delineate the parishes of Leslie, Tullynessle and Forbes are scattered about the area.

Having had a couple of weeks hiatus with the weekly virtual family quiz we were back in harness on Friday. A thunder storm was forecast and at eight o’ clock just as we were connecting up daylight turned into night outside our window and we feared the worst but aside from a single brief very heavy shower of rain it was quickly back to blue skies so we got through the quiz with nothing more dramatic happening than a query over the answer to the question – what are ladies’ fingers? Everyone knows it’s okra. Well, three of us knew. The answer expected was bananas. Bananas! I don’t think so! Apparently, there is a cultivar of banana called The Lady Finger which is nothing like ladies’ fingers. Got to keep on your toes with quizzes.

Our larger-than-life owl is still doing her/his thing keeping death at bay on the balcony among our wee kamikaze birdies who are contenting themselves with drinking plenty during this hot spell from the various water stations we have around the garden and eating a small fortune of seed and nuts. What sounds like a young buzzard has been making a right racket recently. The cry of the buzzard is my ultimate favourite bird call which I associate with being outdoors in fine, bright weather observing this majestic bird wheel overhead. The young buzzard’s more urgent, high-pitched scream is less pleasant. Saw a buzzard being mobbed by crows yesterday – the crows will be protecting young – so it might have been an alarm call. Or it might just have been a contralto buzzard. Our house martins are multiplying. Lots of them out flying in the evenings with considerable activity also during the day. It’s been a good summer for house martins in our part of Aberdeenshire. Lovely little birds.

Missing out on home-grown tomatoes? The next best thing I’ve discovered is to store shop bought ones on a south-facing windowsill. It makes them warm and sweet. Gherkins get warm and not particularly sweet all on their own in the greenhouse. We’ve had quite a lot so far and promised some to our son in Aberdeen. That was the day before Aberdeen was locked down. Did contemplate going to the shire/city boundary near Westhill and throwing a few to him.

Courgettes have been alright but there’s something in the garden that likes them. Bite marks look too big for snails and slugs. I’m wondering mice. Do mice like courgettes?  The runner beans that got off to such a good start have succumbed to squadrons of large snails that plague us. Eaten most of the flower they have. Every morning after I’ve cleaned down the front door I check a hosta growing in a tub nearby at the front. Except for two consecutive days recently I’ve found one or several snails in the tub. I pick them out and throw most of them over the road, to a bank above a burn I might add, not a neighbour’s garden. Funny thing is the hostas we have in other parts of the garden are seldom attacked and I wonder if this particular one is attracting snails building up their shells on the lime mortar around the house. I find loads of them clinging to our house walls and dispose of them in that half-hearted way that avoids death. Do the same ones return? I don’t know. Often thought of marking their shells with tippex to see if they are returnees or different snails. Shock horror! I’ve just discovered one slithering up the wall in our upstairs sittingroom. How it got here is one helluva mystery. However that happened the little blighter has ruined what was a perfectly painted wall. What did I do with it? Should have chucked it off the balcony but took it downstairs and freed it in the back garden.

Finished series 2 of Ozark. For those of you not familiar with it the story-line goes something like this – F**k you. F**k you. F**k you. He’s dead! You killed him. F**k you. F**k you. You bitch. F**k you. I’m their lawyer. F**k you.

Reading an e-book, a novel called The Dentist. Apparently it’s part of a series of police procedural stories. I’m not really into reading full books on my tablet and I don’t find it as relaxing as a proper paper book but times must. The novel reminds me of the style of detective novels created by Maj Sjöwall’s and Per Wahlöö’s in their Martin Beck books. And that’s a compliment.

Stay safe

Women’s football: More than a game

‘It goes without saying that the play was of the most amateurish description.’

The rest of the report of an international football match between Scotland and England was written in the same sneering vein. It went on to draw a picture of the hilarity of the event as spectators cheered, laughed, hooted and shouted vulgar insults at the players. The cause of so much derision was the match was being played by women.

It was on the evening of Monday 16th May 1881 that the international game got underway on Shawfield Grounds near Rutherglen Bridge. The fixture wasn’t ideal but it was the only one the organisers were able to secure as the men’s clubs refused permission for their pitches to be used – on grounds that female football could ‘only be regarded as an unseemly exhibition, and sent those getting up the match to seek for a field elsewhere.’

Women’s (the word was never used as far as I could see, instead ladies, girls or female) football matches in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries were often arranged to raise funds for charities. This international was no different and around 400 persons paid to watch the game with hundreds of others sneaking in without paying.

‘It goes without saying that the play was of the most amateurish description’ which may have been true but you just know the report was partly written before a ball was kicked. So it continued in this sneering tone confirming how women were ill-equipped to play the sport along the lines of what do women know or understand about such manly activities? 

About 55 minutes into play and part of the crowd, ‘the rougher elements’ cut through the ropes separating spectators from the players and the pitch was invaded by a gleeful mob of some 4000 men surrounding the women. The police in attendance charged into the crowd hitting out with their batons and though greatly outnumbered eventually managed to get the women off the park and onto their bus. It must have been terrifying for them and no details were given in the report but some of the players were said to have been ‘badly treated by the mob.’ As the women players were driven away they were hissed at by the pack of men.

The report ended with the view it ‘was hoped such an exhibition would not be repeated.’ Whether it was the male mob mentality or women’s football was unclear.

‘We do not know whether these Amazons had shocked the delicacy of the multitude, but the fact remains that they would not allow the game to proceed.’

There we have it that old ploy – blame the victim. The 4-5,000 men gathered to laugh and abuse women playing a game don’t sound like they were encumbered by delicate sensibilities.

What was it that made these men feel it was acceptable behaviour to go out of their way to sneer and jeer at women participating in a harmless game to raise money for charity? Why could they not just ignore the women if they thought their game would be so ridiculously poor quality? Because it was never about the women’s football prowess it was all about harassment and ridicule of a group they learnt through their lives were inferior to them and deserved their scorn. That sort of attitude can take people far- you can build empires on the back of denigrating whole populations – deny they are your equals so easing your conscience over controlling, manipulating and exploiting them.

Women from all classes in society were active in the 1890s to improve their rights in law, education, employment, politics and in society in general. Women, irrespective of their position, excluding a certain queen, were regarded as weak and vulnerable children and incapable of logical thought and whose function was solely biological – producing children (the BMJ warned that women’s organs would suffer if they played football.) And yet, working class women were working their fingers to the bone. Poor women had always worked and contributed to family incomes. Many single middle class women also worked. At the same time women were being outrageously exploited as cheap labour and were undermined in every way possible.

Women can’t …because they are women.

The more women fought for the same rights  as men to votes, to education, to careers, to handle their own affairs, to be taken seriously the more strident the opposition to these demands became because it was against – nature? Christian values?

This is all very confusing for during earlier periods of Scottish history football was not so clearly regarded as male. Wasn’t Mary Queen of Scots supposed to have enjoyed a bit of kick-about on the royal lawn? Weren’t football matches between single and married woman in Scottish villages accepted as part of the culture as for example Musselburgh’s annual Shrove Tuesday match between married and single fish women?

Fast-forward to the 19th and 20th centuries and antagonism towards women appears to have hardened in some quarters. When the Chartists turned round and dropped women’s enfranchisement as one of their demands because it was argued working class men could achieve the vote faster and then give their sisters a hike up the political rights ladder they began a trend which side-lined women.

There was no simple journey to achieve a level of political representation for working class men (from political rights others follow) for the middle classes had dropped them at the Great Reform Act 1832 in much the same way as women were sold-out by their men a few years later but women not only had to fight the political establishment they had to fight their own men folk as well.

Chartism gave way to Trades Unions and right up to the 1970s (and beyond) this male dominated institution has put up barriers to women’s equality. They were never for the many but always for the few. They were about skills and preserving status within skill groups. They were about preserving the status and privileges won by men at the expense of the non-skilled and women. They were about ensuring those with particular skills received higher pay than others in jobs designated less skilled  – which always included women’s work. Trades Unions fought and fought hard to prevent equal pay for women. They were still doing it recently in Glasgow where the council has to find cash to reimburse women who were sold out by the Labour Party and Unions.

So what’s this got to do with women’s football? you ask. Everything.

It does not matter what activities are being discussed women’s participation was, until recently, ridiculed. Even in those occupations regarded as female – nursing, primary school teaching – it was the pattern up until the last couple of decades that most promoted posts were held by men. Different battle. Similar tactics.

Football was not played by ‘self-respecting females’ it was said. When matches ended in violence it was seen as possibly a good thing, likely to put an end to silly girls thinking they could do everything men could and put an end to such nonsense.

The report in  The Greenock Advertiser in 1881 whose headline ran –‘The Glasgow Roughs and the Female Football Teams’ – when ‘ruffians’ cut the ropes at a ‘So-called female football match’ there was condemnation of a dangerous situation but antagonism towards women for creating the problem. Just who did these women think they were?

‘ladies in knickerbocker suits was a women’s right too far. It is indecent and ought to be suppressed by the police.’

England, Preston 1920

Women didn’t slink away to lick their wounds. They carried on playing football. Four years later when a British Ladies Football Club toured Scotland a London sport journal employed predictably robust language to describe it: a ‘farce’, they (ladies) were ‘ignorant of the simple rudiments of the Association rules’ ‘painful to look at’ – which all smacked of that familiar anger  over women being so uppity  as to think they were entitled to indulge in sport – they might have been asking for something equally ridiculous such as representation in parliament.  The reporter applauded leading Glasgow clubs approached by the ‘girls’ for coaching who would have nothing to do with them.

And still the women played on. A month after the outrageous scenes at Rutherglen the international was resumed, this time at Windmill in Yorkshire, when Scotland came out on top beating England 3-2.

When in March 1895 a gate of 10,000 turned up for a women’s match in London the teams were greeted by a

‘roar of laughter. Hundreds fell off the fence … Tears rolled down cheeks of men never known to weep in public. They fell upon each other’s necks and shoulders. Small boys fell into paroxysms. Women smiled and blushed. The referee, a small man but brave, grinned and made desperate but ineffectual efforts to cover his face as well as his head with his cap.’

More sexist abuse came thick and fast.  

‘One of the Blues was built on Dutch lines, and was at once dubbed “Fatty”. The reporter on the Gloucester Citizen made special reference to the women’s hairstyles and it went to town on the appearance of one player.

‘ One of the Red side’s appearance caused shrieks of laughter – on account of her size and boyish appearance. She looked ridiculously, even insanely, diminutive for a football game. Then she was built like a boy, ran like a boy, and like a boy who could run very fast at the age of ten, and she seemed to know too much about the game for a girl of any size, her height being about three feet.’

And so it went on in this offensive and hysterical tone, commenting on how the women ran, not waddling like most girls and how few seemed familiar with the rules of the game. At the end of the match the women departed to shouts of ‘Chuck on another scuttle of coals.’

Of course women persevered. It’s what women do. Their football matches across England attracted huge crowds – sometimes a gate of 40,000. 

There were few such hang-ups over women being able to step into men’s boots at the outbreak of World War I. Then they were essential to the war effort- not only continuing to operate Britain’s infrastructure but manufacturing munitions. Women from across the British Isles were drafted in to work making explosives, shells, tanks, bullets, gas masks. This was dangerous work and munitions women used to let off steam through playing football in their dinner breaks with the best taking part in inter-factory competitions.

After the war women resumed their roles of being feeble and incapable and their abilities diminished – even in something as simple and straightforward as a game of football. Good God! they were exposing their legs. Football associations did their level best to prevent the women’s game emerging in any meaningful way. At the millennium men were still wading through the merde of their prejudices – Joe Royal, an English football club manager insisted, ‘I’m not sexist but I don’t approve of female officials in professional football.’ Yes, Mr Royal that is being sexist.

In 2004 FIFA President Sepp Blatter advocated women should ‘wear tighter shorts and low cut shirts…to create a more female aesthetic.’ He is currently under a ban by FIFA but not for such sexist claptrap.

132 years and a distance of 13 miles after women footballers were abused on the park at Rutherglen Motherwell and BBC Scotland sport pundit Tam Cowan demonstrated a century plus was a mere blink in terms of male hostility towards the game. He might have been writing the report on the game in May 1881 but it was 2003 when he was quoted in the Daily Record saying –

‘Fir Park should have been torched after it hosted women’s football’ Why do they still persevere with this turgid spectacle? And why was it allowed anywhere near Motherwell’s hallowed turf?

‘Just the other week, I bumped into a couple of women footballers (I’ve still got the bruises to prove it) and they were honestly two of the nicest blokes I’ve ever met. But no amount of politically correct claptrap could force me to say I enjoyed a single second of that guff at Fir Park on Thursday night. BBC Alba must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if they’re now broadcasting this tosh live.

‘Aye, give me an hour of some dreary Highlander reciting poems about the fishing industry – in Gaelic – any day of the week. Incredibly, the game was live on telly AND radio!’

His tedious prejudices where he dismisses the lives and culture of my grannies in a sentence provide a fine example of not just one but several sets of ascribed status – placing groups into categories redolent with shared characteristics which makes them easy targets for humiliation and denigration. This bloke from a town in the central belt demonstrates his dislike of Highlanders whose lives are different from Cowan’s and so to be disparaged through the placing the adjective ‘dreary’ in front Highlander. He shows up his intolerance with a jibe at the fishing industry – perhaps not seen as manly as steel men? How do I know what goes through this guy’s minced head. He’s definitely one of those types who maligns Gaelic, preferring the glottal stop type of speech more familiar to him. And behind all this fume and fury? Women. Bloody uppity women.

Scotland team 1895

Ascribed status is discrimination and with discrimination comes humiliation, mockery and a touch of outraged anger at the group’s activities. Cowan went on –

‘This was a Group 4 game and the Bosnian team looked as if they’d just arrived in one of their vans. Did you see their goalie? She put the baws into Bosnia (although on the off-chance she reads this, I hasten to add I’m only kidding). 

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/tam-cowan-fir-park-should-2314034

It was 1972 when the first official women’s international took place, in Greenock when England beat Scotland 3-2.

On 4 September 2018 Scotland’s women qualified for the 2019 Women’s World Cup Finals. Well done them.

From the Cock o’ the North to Commissioner Jim Gordon via Huntly Castle

Huntly Castle from the mid-15th to early-17th century

Huntly Castle is a ruin but what a ruin. It is big and bold and sits in a green park surrounded by trees and the rivers Bogie and Deveron.

The calm side of the River Deveron

Motte where the first motte and bailey Strathbogie castle was built in the late 1100s

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next to what remains of the castle is part of an extant motte site of the original 12th century Strathbogie castle – built for an earl of Fife. This first castle was wooden and was burnt down by the Black Douglas clan in 1496. Out of the ashes emerged first a tower house built soon after the fire and gradually more buildings were added until the great hulk of castle we see now – bigger and bolder than the earlier one emerged and to be on the safe side it was constructed of stone; mainly sandstone and freestone, altogether more resistant to fire than wood. Practically nothing remains of the tower house but the later castle, though tumbledown, hints at what it must have been like – something pretty amazing.

Stables for the short garron ponies, brew house, bake house and other remains including  the area where the L-plan tower house was erected in the 15th century to replace the lost wooden castle

King James IV used to make annual pilgrimages to the shrine of Saint Duthac in Tain, north of Inverness, and he often stopped off at Huntly en route. During one visit, in 1501, he watched the stonemasons at work building or biggin the castle as they say in the northeast of Scotland and so impressed was he with their handiwork he gave them some tokens in the way of money and I’m not surprised because they made a grand job of it; the stone carving is superb.

A fragment of the original roughly paved road made up of pebbles and boulders which led to the eastern part of the castle constructed in the 17thC

The spectacular ruin that stands in Huntly belonged to the Gordon family. Many of you will know that the name Gordon is very much associated with Aberdeenshire although scratch around and you might disturb some French roots in the guise of Gourdon (there is a place of that name farther down the Aberdeenshire coast) and a nod to Berwickshire where a bloke by the name of Sir Adam de Gordon thought he would like a bit of a change – and having shifted allegiance during the Scottish Wars of Independence he eventually ended up on the right side and was promptly rewarded with parcels of land in Strathbogie by Robert the Bruce. Such is how land came to be distributed – ending up in the hands of powerful families – handed out like sweeties. Cronyism has a long pedigree. Doing someone a favour, raising troops to fight their cause once secured immense tracts of land for families who prided themselves on their ability to accumulate piles and piles of the countryside. Some of them are still determinedly clinging on to land they acquired in all manner of dodgy ways in the past and will fight anyone who suggests they don’t have fair claim to their estates – in the courts not on the battlefield anymore.

The Gordons were proud of their lands and the great muckle house built at Huntly. George Gordon the 1st Marquess of Huntly had pride a-plenty which probably explains why plastered his and hers names right across the front of their impressive pile – akin today of installing neon lighting on the front of your house. The bold inscription reads:

GEORGE GORDON FIRST MARQUESS OF HUNTLY 16
HENRIETTE STEWART MARQUESSE OF HUNTLY 02

Not forgetting the hand of God pointing out each name. Well if you have it, flaunt it, said God.

 

The hand of God points to the names of the Gordons who owned the castle

All generations of Gordons included a George so the story of the George Gordons can get very muddled and as the Gordons were always in the thick of the action, more than your average family, I will avoid going into detail. However, I cannot entirely.

Three storeys of the castle

Original studded oak door

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the several George Gordons – the one who wrote his name across his house – was an influential political figure in Scotland, attached to the royal court, and a nephew of James V. He was no shrinking violet as you may have deduced and earned himself the nickname, the Cock o’ the North.

 

Certainly one of the oldest wooden lavatory seats in Scotland

The great fireplace was disfigured by Covenanters who disapproved of its Catholic imagery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This epithet transferred to the Gordon Highlander regiment who came to be known as the Cocky wee Gordons and not-so-long-ago a popular ditty was oft sung across Scotland – ask your granny or maybe your great granny and watch her face light up with the memory.

A Gordon for me, a Gordon for me,
If ye’re no a Gordon ye’re no use to me.
The Black Watch are braw, the Seaforths and a’
But the cocky wee Gordon’s the pride o’ them a’.

Mary of Guise, Mary Queen of Scots’ mother, was involved in a plot to clip the wings of the Cock o’ the North. I should have said the Gordons were Catholics and so was Mary of Guise but then she turned on some other Catholics at the time of the Reformation because – well, because that was the politic thing to do – and heads were optional extras in those days.

Gordon the Catholic was ambushed by a party of royalist Stewarts and he was killed. His corpse was then embalmed and put on trial for treason. I can assure you stranger things have happened. His castle was looted and religious carvings relating to the old faith found there, including two medallions above his front door – most unusual in Scotland, were destroyed.

The main doorway beautifully carved

 

Oriel window high up on the south-facing wall with spectacular views across the countryside

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you will have gathered people, let’s be clear men, were pretty bloodthirsty all those centuries ago – and that’s without video nasties – and there was a definite trend for Scotland’s landed families to go at it hammer and tongs against their neighbours. You would think history has been a constant power struggle for land and political influence and you’d be right.

A remnant of ornate plaster work. The whole castle once was adorned with such intricate craftsmanship

Back to the castle. Medieval palaces tended to expand over the centuries ending up in a melange of architectural styles. Huntly Castle is no different. Building was still going on when the Scottish civil war broke out in the 17th century. All these centuries on and the Gordons were still fighting anyone and everyone; family, strangers, neighbours – everyone.

 

Graffiti is there in abundance in the castle with some beautifully written letters

At the Battle of Aberdeen in 1644 at the time of the Scottish Civil War the Gordon clan fought on both sides – Covenanters and Royalists so that at least some of them would be on the winning side.

Another fireplace with medallions of George Gordon and Henrietta Stewart

George Gordon, 2nd Marquess of Huntly, (son of George Cock o’ the North and Henrietta Stewart) brought up a Protestant Episcopalian at the court of James VI, was on the winning, royalist, side at the Battle of Alford in 1645 at which he fought alongside his son, also George, who was killed. George the 2nd Marquess had, in 1639, been secretly appointed to oppose the Covenanters in the north of Scotland and at Turriff he led a force of 2,000 in a show of strength against a gathering of 800 men led by the Marquess of Montrose (then in support of the Covenanters.) The two sides sized each other up but a tense situation passed without the spilling of blood.

 

Stone stairs lead to all kinds of interesting nooks and crannies. Some original joist ends have survived and the later castle from the north side

The peace was not to last and there followed a game of cat and mouse between Montrose and Gordon who was none too keen on getting dragged into the whole difficult affair with the Covenanters.

One day Montrose said to Gordon, “Do you fancy a trip to Edinburgh?”

Gordon smelling a rat replied, “No, not really.”

Montrose, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer and so Gordon was taken to the capital to intimidate him into behaving but he shrugged off the threat and travelled north again and fought in a battle at the Brig o’ Dee at Aberdeen. As a punishment Huntly Castle was plundered and the fate of both castle and the Gordons thereafter followed a downward trajectory. Gordon/Huntly was again a wanted man who embarked on the 1640s equivalent of trains, planes and automobiles to make his escape – by horse, foot and boat. He kept on the move – all around the north of Scotland but was captured at Strathdon in a violent incident that saw both his servants and friends killed. Gordon ended up back in Edinburgh, locked up in the tolbooth until in March 1649 he was beheaded.

Prisoners abandoned in a deep, dark hole beneath the castle had no chance of escape

Life was one long power struggle for wealthy families in past centuries but there were occasional intermissions when peace broke out long enough for a game of football to take place or even a marriage. Football was a popular pastime with the rich and powerful in Scottish society in past centuries – less so today.

 

The Gordons enjoyed a game of fitba and like most landed gentry they also liked to keep their options open by shifting allegiances according to where their interests happened to lie on any particular day. They were split as a family during the Jacobite risings in 1715-16 and 1745-46 when once more royalist/government troops took over Huntly Castle and the gentle decay that had begun in the previous century continued apace following the unfriendly attentions of anti-Jacobite government troops.

It’s hard to get an impression of how opulent Huntly Castle must have been in its heyday – reputedly no expense spared and very grand indeed with all the main rooms highly decorated and beautifully painted ceilings. John Anderson was the painter responsible for some of the ceiling work, not sure if he was local, might have been and so impressive were his efforts he was commissioned to work on Falkland Palace and Edinburgh Castle. Of course Huntly Castle set the standard. The few remaining carvings tease us into regretting what has been lost but Historic Scotland have done a grand job both with the preservation of the place and a highly informative glossy booklet available in the shop.

As for the Gordons they were scattered across the country and the Continent some settled in Poland. There are still an awful lot of Gordons around Aberdeenshire and some famous ones around the world – and the most famous of all surely Commissioner Jim Gordon of Gotham City unless you think Lord Byron better known – he was half-Scottish – a Gordon through his mother’s family and known as – well what else but George Gordon before England claimed him.

The castle is now home to nesting swallows

Enjoy Huntly Castle.